Monday, June 27, 2016

UTOPiAcon

As most of you know, many others, including myself, were nominated for the chance to win the title "Blogger of the Year Award", and if you didn't know that then you do now. UTOPiAcon chooses the nominees and we, the people, vote for them. I am very honored to have been nominated and I would like to thank everyone that had faith in me. This was my first year at UTOPiAcon and I wasn't sure as to what to expect. What I found was authors, bloggers, cover artists, and readers that were very similar to me. I felt understood and it was one of the GREATEST feeling in the world!

When I got home I started going through my collection of books that were given to me and I was really excited. I don't have and exact count, but I'm thinking I have close to 40 books. I would like to thank all of the authors for giving me plenty of signed swag and their book(s). There were so many authors at UTOPiAcon that I have heard of or reviewed a book of theirs, but never actually got the chance to meet them. For example, Susan Burdorf, Erin Hayes, Ali Winters, Hollie Westring, Ben Hale, Stacey Rourke, Casey L. Bond, Jo Michaels, and many more... A lot of the authors I met at UTOPiAcon were on my watchlist, because their book(s) were my type of genre.

I was also at the panel known as "Teen Titans" with three other teens. They were all awesome at what they did and I enjoyed being in the same room as these teenagers. I befriended two of them, but didn't get much of a chance to talk to the third. "Teen Titans was my first panel and a very fun experience to have. We were asked questions by adults and there were a few that I had a hard time answering. One of the worst questions to ask a blogger is "Who is your favorite author?", because I happen to love almost every book I read and the authors, as well. I was in one more panel aside from this and it was with Blaze Publishing.

Blaze Publishing took place in this large room with a long table. There were authors seated at the table with their books and many other books on the table. We were talking about how people judge a book by the cover. There was a game were we had to try to figure out the genre of the book by the cover. It was very fun, but it wasn't fool-proof. I would like to say that everyone with Blaze Publishing at UTOPiAcon were awesome. Ryan Hill, Jacob Devlin, Krystal Wade, and Mara Valderran(I save the best for last wink, wink). I hope to speak to these AWESOME people sometime soon!

For the next week, I am going to tell you about what went on at UTOPiAcon. If anyone wants to add their experiences in UTOPiAcon, then just email me what you would like displayed on my blog. The offer lasts all week, so whenever you want to talk about your experiences, feel free...

I am so excited for next year... UTOPiAcon is going to be interesting next year!